Category: springer retractions

In June of 2020, officials from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center of San Francisco and the University of California, San Francisco, sent a letter to the journal Oncogene with the findings of an investigation of scientific misconduct: A paper the journal had published in 2007 contained “falsified data,” and the officials recommended the journal “assess this paper for retraction.”

The 2020 letter – which we obtained through a public records request – was the second time the institutions had alerted the journal. As the officials stated, a previous  investigation had found issues in the 2007 paper, and UCSF-VA had communicated “earlier evidence that this same paper had data fabrication and/or falsification constituting research misconduct” to the journal in 2017. 

“Even though the journal has been notified after the last investigation and not taken action,” the 2020 letter stated, “they should be notified again because additional research misconduct has been found.” 

In fact, a journal staffer was in the midst of discussing the issues in the article with Rajivir Dahiya, the corresponding author and then director of UCSF’s Urology Research Center with an appointment at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch. 

Continue reading When it takes two university-federal agency letters – and five years – for a journal to retract a paper

Springer Nature has retracted a book chapter which critics say was plagued with “extremely offensive and outdated” statements about the deaf community. 

The chapter, “Literature Review on Sign Language Generation,” was published in September 2022 as part of Data Management, Analytics and Innovation: Proceedings of ICDMAI 2022 (International Conference on Data Management, Analytics and Innovation). The authors, five researchers at the Cummins College of Engineering for Women in Pune, India, attempted to review work on sign language translation – specifically with artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

From the abstract: 

Continue reading Springer Nature retracts chapter on sign language deaf scholars called “extremely offensive”

A Springer Nature journal has retracted a 2017 paper on induced brain injuries in piglets over questions about the data – making us wonder if the animals weren’t essentially tortured (if the experiments truly took place) as part of someone’s misconduct.  

Meanwhile, Springer Nature seems to have wiped its hands clean of the matter involving a paper from the lab of William Armstead, a now-retired pharmacy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who is up to five retractions. The publisher agreed to refer any questions about the case to the main institution involved, a private university, meaning that readers and the public have little if any recourse to learn the truth unless it releases a report on the matter – which rarely happens. 

No one at Penn has responded to repeated requests for comment from us. And even if they release a report, as we’ve written, the record of the misconduct might leave much to be desired. 

Continue reading Penn maintains wall of silence over now-retired prof as retractions mount

A Springer Nature journal has decided not to retract a paper it had been investigating for plagiarism since receiving allegations in January 2021. The decision came 1.5 years since the editor-in-chief apparently agreed the paper should be retracted, and just a few days after we reported on the case. 

Systems engineer Paola Di Maio notified Springer Nature in January 2021 that the article, “Robotic Standard Development Life Cycle in Action,” published in the Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, described a methodology she had developed without crediting her work. As we wrote in our post on Friday, Aug. 5th: 

Continue reading On second thought: journal reverses course on paper it agreed to retract last year

Should publishers acknowledge the work of sleuths when their work has led to retractions?

We were prompted to pose the question by a recent retraction from International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics of a 2021 paper. The notice reads:

Continue reading A tale of (3)2 retraction notices: On publishers, paper mill products, and the sleuths that find them

Two weeks after we reported on the unsuccessful efforts of a researcher at The Ohio State University to have one of his papers retracted for data manipulation, the journal that had been delaying the move has acted. 

As we wrote earlier this month based on a request for public records, Philip Tsichlis had been urging Nature Communications since November of last year to retract a 2021 article from his group which contained fabricated findings. But although a second journal had reacted promptly to the request, retracting the paper in December, the Nature Communications editors didn’t – resulting in a series of emails in which the researcher negotiated the wording of the retraction notice and expressed increasing frustration with the delay. (Both journals are owned by Springer Nature.)

Now, two weeks after our story, the journal has retracted the article, “AKT3-mediated IWS1 phosphorylation promotes the proliferation of EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinomas through cell cycle-regulated U2AF2 RNA splicing.”

According to the notice: 

Continue reading Seven months after an author request, journal retracts

A med-tech journal whose editor-in-chief is the president-in-waiting of the American Medical Association has retracted six papers for compromised peer review and related problems.  

The Journal of Medical Systems, led by Jesse Ehrenfeld – an anesthesiologist in Wisconsin who this week became president-elect of the AMA –  said the articles were part of a special issue that ran in 2018 titled “Advancements in Internet of Medical Things for Healthcare System.”

Here’s the retraction notice for “LSTM Model for Prediction of Heart Failure in Big Data”:

Continue reading Journal run by new AMA president-elect caught in special issue scam

On a Saturday last November, Philip Tsichlis of The Ohio State University received an email no researcher wants to get. 

Another scientist had tried to replicate a finding in a recent paper of his, and couldn’t. “We believe that our results should lead to some revision of the model you propose,” stated the email, which was released to us by OSU following a public records request. 

It turned out that was an understatement. The email eventually led Tsichlis to discover data fabrication in that paper and a related article. Within a week, he requested the retraction of both papers, one in Communications Biology and the other in Nature Communications, both Springer Nature journals. One was retracted in December, but not the other.

In an email to a Nature Communications editor on November 22nd, Tsichlis wrote: 

This has been a nightmare and I blame myself for not having detected it earlier. However, we cannot go back. I hope that we will retract this paper as soon as possible. 

Seven months later, it remains unflagged. 

Continue reading ‘This has been a nightmare’: One paper was retracted. The other still lingers.

Perhaps the Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing needs to look for a different kind of smarts.

The journal – a Springer Nature title – has just retracted 51 papers. The episode is the latest in a string of high-volume retractions by major publishers of papers included in special issues. In at least five cases, editors have claimed that their peer review processes were scammed by what some have called rogue editors.

All of the Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing retractions begin this way:

Continue reading Journal about ‘ambient intelligence’ retracts more than 50 papers at once

Springer Nature has retracted 44 papers from a journal in the Middle East after determining that they were rubbish. 

The articles, which showed up in the Arabian Journal of Geosciences starting earlier this year, many of which involve at least some researchers based in China, and from their titles appear to be utter gibberish — yet managed still to pass through Springer Nature’s production system without notice.    

The retractions follow the flagging of more than 400 papers by the publisher for concerns about “serious research integrity” breaches in the articles. Those concerns were first surfaced by a commenter on PubPeer and by a group of researchers who have been identifying and exposing nonsense papers. 

Continue reading Springer Nature geosciences journal retracts 44 articles filled with gibberish